Ben Yonas (pictured), 27-year-old engineer and producer, relies on his pair of Klein + Hummel O 300 active three-way reference monitors, which he has had specially road-cased. “In my opinion, they’re the truest monitors on the market,” says Yonas, co-owner of the Bill Putnam–designed Coast Recorders Studio in San Francisco with Paul Stubblebine. Yonas is also the founder of Yonas Media and Yonasty Productions, with studios on the East and West Coasts. “Everybody falls in love with their favorite pair of monitors, and I’ve done the same with my Klein + Hummels.
“When I’m working on records,” he continues, “it’s often at different stages in the production process and in different studios. But when I finalize a record, I like to be in the New York studio sitting in front of the O 300s. They’re my final stage of reference before going to mastering.”
Yonas was introduced to the O 300s by engineering partner Dave Greenberg of Sonopod Studio in St. Petersburg, Fla. “Dave tried virtually every type of monitors in his studio and recommended the Klein + Hummels after he bought a pair for himself,” he says. “When they showed up, I was amazed. Most notably, there’s a true center, which most monitors don’t have. I find that with most monitors, you can’t hear the image move flawlessly from left to right; it drops off in the middle. The center on the O 300s is special in that it doesn’t drop off; it is seamless.
“That’s not all,” he continues. “The overall depth and imaging seem so much wider and richer than other monitors. I fell in love with the trueness of the overall sound. They’re not especially bright and they’re not big and boomy, they’re just right. They really make you work at your mixes, but when you are done, you are done. In an ideal world, the plan would be to have a pair of those everywhere I work.”
In fact, Yonas’ O 300s regularly travels with him in specially made road cases. “When I can, I bring the 300s with me. I brought them overseas with me when I produced a record for artist Lenka Dusilova, who is one of the top artists in the Czech Republic and currently signed to Universal. Studios in Prague are often lacking in equipment, especially monitors. I’ve been working in Europe for the past four months doing her record, plus some records in Copenhagen and some work in London, and my O 300s have been with me the whole way.”
For more information on the monitors, visit Klein + Hummel’s U.S. distributor, Sennheiser, at www.sennheiserusa.com.
